There was a certain amount of magic in the air the night that Emmy and John got married. Even the old priest noticed. He faltered amongst the vows, stopping between "speak now" and "forever hold your peace." He paused for just a moment, looking up at the faeries that circled the altar, and then continued on.

Everyone cried, even Emmy's dad, the Boston banker. He tried to make it look so nonchalant, but his bow-tie was slick with tears by the end.

I don't know who asked or when. Someone said later it was John's grandmother, the ugly one with the beehive hair-do. It happened just as we started to throw rice and the happy couple was prepared to drive away. "Why is it," she asked, "that the faeries didn't cry?" It seemed so obvious once she'd said it. Faeries can come to bless you or curse you, but surely blessing faeries would have cried at their wedding.

I stopped in mid-motion, allowing the rice to trickle slowly down my up-raised sleeve. The car pulled away, and the faeries came down on it like a swarm of mystic hornets. They grabbed it, and the combined strength of their numbers lifted it effortlessly.

They flew off toward the moon, leaving behind only a silvery trail of faerie dust to record their passage. There was crying, screaming, and at least three people fainted, one of them Emmy's father the banker.

I've often wondered what they could have done to make faeries that mad. What did those unseelie guests do with the couple in high off Faerie? If they killed him, they could at least have had the common decency to return John's Mustang convertible.